One Woman's Army, by Janis Karpinski with Steven Strasser

One Woman's Army: The Commanding General of Abu Ghraib Tells Her Story, by Janis Karpinski with Steven Strasser
Miramax Books, 2005
242 pages. No index. 8 pages of color photos

Description
When Janos Karpinski first saw the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, she felt the walls of her Baghdad office closing in on her. She recognized that the soldiers shown grinning over the naked, cowering Iraqi detainees served under her command. Military justice had already had swept up the seven MPs charged in the abuse case - and Karpinski soon learned that the system was about to turn on her.

Here is the inside story of the first female general ever to comman troops in a combat zone, and of how the scandal destroyed her career. It traces the rise of a groundbreaking woman from the Republican suburbs of New Jersey to a commanding position in a man's army.

Karpinski earned her general's insignia as a master parachutist, recipient of the Bronze Star in the first Gulf WAr,, and as the leader chosen for a special mission to train Arab women as a fighting force in the Middle East.

In Iraq, Karpinski and her 3,400 US soldiers faced the biggest challenge of all: rebuilding a civilian prison system left in shambles by SAddam Hussein. She describes the ordeal of serving in a violent landscape populated by US commanders flailing at a growing insurgency, and by the specter of the captive Saddam, who showed surprise at meeting a female general and refused to believe that Karpinski could be in charge of his incarceration. In the end, Karpinski accepts her share of responsibility for the abuses, but raises a larger question: why was she the most prominent target of the investigations?

Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The photos
2. Saddam's torture palace
3. Adventurse with George
4. This woman's army
5. Playing with little guns
6. It's okay, I can suffer
7. Fort Bragg: Headquarters of machismo
8. Janis of Arabia
9. The Weekend Warrior
10. Gulf War I
11. Our very own chocolate chips
12. Get me an airplane, I'm going to Iraq
13. The Road to Baghdad
14. These are prisoners, Janis
15. The Incarceration cowboys
16. Actionable intelligence
17. Taking the Gloves off